Chicago police officer sues law school, alleges discrimination against white cops

A Chicago police officer is suing the University of Illinois, alleging that the school discriminated against him due to his status as a white man, Newsweek reported on Tuesday.

What are the details?

Lt. John Cannon's lawsuit states that the University of Illinois Chicago School of Law damaged his reputation — which in turn limited his career opportunities — after he complained about an email sent to students from former Dean Darby Dickerson on the subject of George Floyd's death.

The 23-year police officer — who recently obtained a degree from the UIC Law School — said that he objected to Dickerson's 2020 email, in which the former school administrator purportedly linked the killing and police officers at large to white supremacy. Cannon said that he requested to be removed from the mailing list, but an unnamed associated dean responded and told Cannon that he was welcome to "withdraw from the law school or drop out of classes" instead.

"I was offended to a degree that is hard to articulate. I come from a long line of honorable police officers," Cannon told WFLD-TV in a statement on the email.

Cannon said that a fellow law student later hacked his Facebook account and shared some of his private statuses — including purportedly conservative-leaning memes — to a public Twitter account. The unnamed student, according to Cannon, "included fake captions on them and then shared them to Twitter pages all over the city, including the mayor, the superintendent of police."

Cannon said that the event prompted an investigation by the Civilian Office of Police Accountability and that he is currently being subjected to disciplinary actions.

"There's been a lot of damage to me," he told the station. "One of the reasons I went to law school was because I wanted to further my career. I want to advance, either on the police department or elsewhere."

An attorney for Cannon said that one of his client's biggest goals is to force the law school to recognize that this type of behavior is "so inappropriate," "especially for a law school." Cannon and his legal team also want the school to take action to ensure something like this "doesn't happen again."

A spokesperson for the law school told the station that they don’t comment on pending litigation.